Creative musings in bright colors

Posts tagged ‘piCture pOlish’

I love the concept behind this nail art, but I’m honestly not sure I love the execution? I think this design is busy enough that it would work better as an accent nail and not a full mani. So, just pick one or two nails and stare at them I guess!

This mani was time-consuming because instead of using striping tape I used stamps and freehand to make everything. Basically, I stamped the initial gold triangle at my cuticle with Penny Talk and then filled in the design (which was hollow) with Juliette. Once that was top coated and dried, I did the rest. I stamped with a black creme polish the black chevrons, and then the rose gold chevron again (each was an individual stamp…so there are 4 stamps on each nail except my thumb which was 6). I then colored in the black stamps with Storm, and did my best to spare the crossing rose gold. I could have just stamped with Penny Talk after the black was all dry, but that would be ANOTHER layer of top coat and drying and I was feeling lazy. So I colored around it :-p….it probably took longer anyway.

Again, needlessly complicated, but in the end kinda cool? I’ve been back on a bit of a geometric kick recently. I wish I had time for some freehand, I’ve been feeling inspired! That’s all for today, for Friday we get back to colors and some flowers! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Honestly, my nails were too long (that never happens!) for the nail art I was trying to create here! So I improvised a bit. I think the original might be better! It also kinda looks like one chevron (the black one) was bolded in my version, so voila, title!

The design was inspired by Penelope Luz, but her version is beautifully minimalist. Mine has more color. And glitter.

Copycat Claws posted a blue-and-white moroccan tile design that I love and want to copy… but while I am in the hospital I should probably avoid bright blue nails! At least as I started out. So I decided that if I couldn’t do blue, I could at least try nude! (To be fair I pained these back in July, before I realized no one would care much about my nails). That said, these came out well if I do say so myself!

I used four nude-toned polishes and two shimmery toppers to make this. Since I only have one clear stamper that works well, I had to do each nail individually. It wasn’t DIFFICULT but I did take a long time!

I’ll meet o keep in mind that I have to try this in blue at a later point! I do admit though, it isn’t very harvest-y, and unfortunately I have to admit I didn;t have time to put together a real Thanksgiving mani! But the rest of this week is at least fall-themed :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

How about some silver triangles on a multichrome glitter base? Don’t mind if I do!

I don’t really know where this manicure came from, just that I wanted to play with Aurora and felt like using a funky triangle stamp. I do love funky geometric stamps! Lets be honest, a lot of stamps are things I could do freehand if I just had enough time. But perfect swirls and perfect geometric lines I could not do without hours! Which is probably why most of my favorite stamps are either straight lines or swirly bits.

That’s it for today! But happy Friday, and I hope you enjoyed the multichrome shininess of Aurora as much as I did! It almost doesn’t matter in this age of a million multichromes, but I had Aurora long before multichrome toppers were much of a thing :-p yes I am a hipster nail polish owner.

This manicure makes me happy and sad, which is unusual for something as simple as nail art! But looking at these, as much as I hate my nail length, I like how they ended up!

Once they were done, they reminded me of a stone so I went looking for something appropriate on the internet. Apparently, serpentine is a deep green stone with flecks of color and beige-gold veins. Perfect! I wish I could say I was TRYING to make a pretty rock, but I was mostly just having fun with flakies and stamps.

I wasn’t initially going to post these because I broke three nails (omg so sad) and my nails are painfully short and slightly misshapen as a result. However, I liked how the design came out, so I am posting them anyway! Maybe those of you with short nails will find inspiration.

See, no more magnets! Instead you get a multichrome topper over not black? I don’t know what I was thinking but here we go!

I wanted to try Aurora over a dark teal base. And then I decided that bubbles were appropriate? My nails under this are a DISASTER. I painted these just after I finished moving apartments, and my ring finger tore to the quick (and is heavily patched), AND my middle finger somehow shattered, but I was able to file the surface to somewhat smooth and apply 4 coats of base coat in a desperate attempt to hold it together, and my pointer folded down the middle. I won’t even mention my poor short thumb nail…I lost both corners on subsequent days! Suffice to say my nails are a disaster and this is one of the last right-handed manis you guys will be seeing for a while!

Despite all the devastation, I think the mani looks surprisingly cool? The teal base blunted a bit of the color shift in Aurora but you can still see both the green and certainly the purple shift. Also, I like this stamp!

Why oh why do I have so many nude polishes? I will end up doing three, yes THREE comparison posts with nudes (pastel nudes, which are up today, pinky nudes, and neutral nudes, both of which will be co-posted on Wednesday). Anyway, on to the “pastel” nudes!

These are the lightest nudes in my collection, which is to say pale creme colored polishes. I have, today, two cremes, one jelly, one shimmer, and one holo. Three of them ended up being identical and I am certainly parting with one! The others I will keep, just because nudes are darn useful (especially given that I start working in the hospital full-time in June).

Prospect Park Bloom took three thick coats and was STILL not completely opaque. It also basically didn’t dry. It was 99 cents, which was why I bought it initially, but I think I’m going to let it go! Cherish stands out because it is both darker and filled with holo shards. I Nude It has very very subtle shimmer that puts it in a hair darker than Boho Babe and Prosecco, which are to my eye complete dupes. I like the brush that L’oreal uses much better than the giant OPI brush, but Prosecco has a bit more polish than Boho, and both work fine.

I decided to go with an art deco pattern, since my nails are STILL pointy-shaped and I really only like geometric things on pointy nails. The stamp is from BP plate L054, the source of most of my geometric patterns! I then colored bits of the design in gold (after stamping, I really should have colored in the design on the stamper head, but this was faster), and added some black and gold dots. I was debating throwing in a fourth color (likely red) but decided to leave it as-is. The dots really helped! For once my “if it doesn’t look completed, add dots” worked 🙂

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And maybe this was useful (basically, you can pay $5 for L’oreal that is the same color and ease of use as a $10 OPI). Also sorry this post is late…but I technically made it up before midnight so Monday!!

Today begins a series of interview (aka work-appropriate) manis! Basically, when I went to residency interviews, I had to paint my nails in such a way that if anyone looked (or asked to see) they had a cool design, and if people were not paying attention, they just looked like a solid color.

This all came about because I listed “nail art” as one of my hobbies on my residency application. I can’t really regret this move, since it both allowed me to actually paint and subtly design my nails during the interviews, and because it occasionally came up in conversation! I even found one fellow application who had previously done nail art (and we talked about stamping plates).

The design you see here is what I wore to my first interview (read: before I broke any nails flying. I always break at least one nail whenever I fly and I don’t understand WHY but my nail shape will start to get wonky after this one). I wanted something subtle but fun!

This is basically just Cherish by Picture Polish (nude with subtle holo) stamped with plate BP-L049 using Penny Talk by Essie (rose gold metallic). The residents at dinner noticed it and were impressed (or confused, in the case of the men). None of the interviewers asked!

Hope you enjoyed! Since I had to go to so darn many interviews (why does neurology have a separate internal medicine year? I don’t know), I have decided to do a work-friendly month of manis. Which is to say the next 3 weeks are going to be nothing but boring nude work-appropriate nails. :-p

So, this was another difficult post to put together! I, again, bought ~50 polishes this year. There were some clear winners and losers, and a few that despite not being interesting have bottles that are almost half empty already! I tend to buy polishes that have been out for a while when my craving for them overwhelms my common sense, so most of these are not “new” this year, and a few (well, just one I think) are limited edition and cannot be purchased any longer (sorry!).

1. Eleven – Illyrian Polish
I cannot with this polish. I absolutely adore orange and red glitters in purple, and this is the first polish that I’ve owned that did it in a way which looked both elegant and fun. I don’t even care that it is top coat hungry.

2. Rosewater – ILNP
I only bought one of the silver-based shifty glitters from ILNP when they came out around a year ago, and it was Rosewater. This polish is a beautiful silver holographic glitter base with tons of pink shimmer. It looks, somehow, both delicate and blingy. I love it.

3. Shadow on the Moon – Emily de Molly
I somehow convinced myself that this polish is subtle and thus that I can wear it more frequently than the above two. I am lying to myself, but I love it so much that I cannot bring myself to care! This polish is a darkened purple-grey base with two sizes of holo glitter and pink shimmer. Actually, I am wearing this polish right now. It is really really pretty.

4. Cherish – Picture Polish
This is one of my polish bottles that is 1/2 empty already. Cherish is a slightly greyed nude/pink color with lots of holo shards (rather than just glitter). I like that the shards make the finish a bit more varied, and that this is still subtle enough to wear to work. I probably wore this on my nails for a good third of all my residency interviews! So, not super interesting, but definitely worth buying if you need subtle but want something fun still on your nails.

5. Memory Palace – Cadillacquer Polish
This is another of the sutble-yet-super-pretty family of polishes that is already half empty. Memory Palace is a teal-grey with golden flakes and subtle holo shimmer. I like that the color is both teal and grey but is pale enough to be wearable to work, but has the holo AND the gold to make it interesting! It also matches my hospital scrubs suspiciously well.

6. Million Dollar Dream – F.U.N. Lacquer
I bought two crazy holographic glitterbombs buy F.U.N., Million Dollar Dream (the gold) and 24 Karat Diamond (silver), but I’ve always liked gold polish better than silver polish for some reason, so I selected the gold to put on my top 10! Both of these polishes are crazy glittery nuts, and make me happy…although removal is a pain in the butt! Worth it.

7. Not Your Average Seahorse – Blush Lacquers
This is the polish that I know is no longer available, as it was part of the Polish Pickup Pack options from October! This polish is absolutely beautiful and colorful with a combination of holographic, multichrome, and shimmer. I think the trend this year is that I really like shimmer in my polish!

8. Pending Perfection – Emily de Molly
Another color with pink shimmer! Oh my gosh. Pending Perfection is a bright teal blue with the most amazing pink shimmer. It combines my favorite things: neon polish and shimmer. he polish is a little thick, but still easy to use. Whenever I want to use a super bright polish, this is where I turn!

9. Dove – ZoyaThis is the first of the creme polishes on this list, and is also already half empty. Dove is by no means a new polish, but I had been searing for a good medium grey, and found it! It is a great two-coat polish. Nothing super fancy, but if you need a grey (like I did), Dove is a great pick!

10. Playing Koi – Essie
The last of the creme polishes to make my top 10 is this dark burnt orange by essie. This is, unfortunately, not the best photo of this polish but oh well. I have a hard time convincing myself to buy oranges since I wear them so infrequently, but somehow ended up with 3 new ones this year! Of those three, this is by far my favorite. The polish only takes two thin coats, maybe only one if I was more careful, and is such an interesting color that it makes the list.

Honorable Mentions:

11. Crown of Thistles – A England
This polish simply glows. I own a number of purple holographic polishes, and this one really stands out for the care that Adina put into the color. It is basically a one-coater. I haven’t worn it as much as I should because I’ve been stuck wearing such boring polishes the last few months with interviews, but it is one that I am most looking forward to playing with this year!

12. Cheers to the Holidays (H) – F.U.N. Lacquer
Hilariously, this was the polish that convinced me to place an order for F.U.N. Lacquer polish when they went on sale, since I had seen soo many stunning photos of this multichrome with glitter and holo. In real life, the polish is quite pretty but not nearly as fantastic at the pictures would have me believe! Mostly because the multichrome is harder to see with all the glitter. I still love this polish and I am glad I bought it, and of the 7 (I think) multichromes that I bought this year, this was my favorite. That said, all of the above polishes were better! But, if you want something with a bit of wow and a cute name, here you go.

Hope you enjoyed! I can’t wait to search everyone else’s blogs and see what polishes I missed this year that I just need to pick up!

This may or may not have been directly inspired by the tagline on Cherish. And I may or may not almost have added some 3D diamond-esque rhinestones and decided that would ruin the look. You’ll never know!

This is one of the rare occasions when, despite painting both hands, you are mostly only seeing my right! When I was in the hospital I could not go off-handed (when the nail polish on one hand is different than the other) because that would be incredibly unprofessional…but the designs were seldom perfectly identical! In the case of this mani, I was moving around the stamped image from nail to nail and I actually liked my right hand better (mostly cause of my pointer finger).

Regardless, this is a bit of a boring mani, sorry! That said, after this post…there are only two hospital manis left! For a while at least (I go back to the clinic next month but there is quite a back-log of posts during my month of free time!).

Colors

~ Nude: Picture Polish – Cherish

~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

~ Stamp: BM – 04

So yep, a bit boring, but so be it. I’ll likely get at least one of the remaining boring ones out of the way next week so we can move on to RAINBOWS and SPARKLES. 😀

Remember how the day before Valentine’s Day I said I had this awesome new nude polish? And then I used that polish as my base for the Valentine’s Dotticure without showing you swatches? Well, here are the swatches!

This is three thin coats of Cherish by Picture Polish. Since I am stuck wearing boring colors in the hospital, I figured it was time to amass a collection of nudes and semi-nudes that are moderately interesting and do not require 23482934 coats to be opaque. This definitely fits the bill!

Cherish is a slightly grey nude with copious holo shards scattered in it. It is quite flattering! The holo certainly catches the light, but it isn’t strong enough to be distracting. It also dried quite nicely 🙂

I stamped over Cherish with Penny Talk by Essie, using a Born Pretty stamping plate. I cannot claim credit for this idea…my sister asked me to use this specific stamp on her nails a while back (hers were blue-on-blue) and I liked how it came out so I decided to use the pattern!

So what do you think, tone-on-tone but still pretty? The best part was that the pattern almost disappeared in indirect lighting, and jumped out in sunlight.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to use this as my day-before-Valentine’s Day mani or not…because there are no hearts! But really, I didn’t paint any hearts this year, so have some pink and red and gold dots 😀

This mani was inspired by @badgirlnails…which really just seems to be a trend for me right now. I think I accidentally browsed her last approximately three years worth of manis and pinned them all to my to-try folder on pinterest. And they are all somewhat simple (like, 1-1.5 hours of work, rather than 3 hours of work) so when I don’t want to stamp I just keep turing to them! I would say whoops, but I honestly like her nail art a bunch so I don’t feel too bad about continually turned to it for inspiration.

Sadly, I haven’t actually edited the mani that includes the swatch of the base color I’ve used here, Cherish by Picture Polish. I’ll see if I can’t get posted next week or something! The nail art that went with it is a bit boring, but it is a pretty polish. So, stay tuned for that!

Regardless, happy almost Valentine’s Day! I hope you eat a lot of chocolates and your lives are filled with flowers. Personally, I love going to the grocery store the day AFTER Valentine’s and grabbing all the half-price chocolate :-D. There is one more pink mani coming on Wednesday (just because), and then on to less girly pastures!

I am a little curious myself…this is my first Valentine’s day since I got married. I don’t think my husband and I are doing anything we don’t usually do (small gifts, fancy dinner, and not-flowers), but will it feel different? I highly doubt it :-p. Hope you enjoyed the nail art!

I had been missing water marbles…so I went ahead and did one! I have been seeing a lot of pink + coral + gold, so I used that color theme.

Ever since I got Clearwater by Pipe Dream Polish, I have taken great glee out of water marbling over a metallic polish that would NEVER otherwise be usable…like Good as Gold by essie. Metallics do not marble!

This was fast and dirty…I just did a fun looking pattern in the marbled polish and dipped my whole darn hand in at once. I usually don’t do that, but I didn’t feel like wasting a whole bunch of polish and I was getting impatient with myself. Despite my rush, the whole thing came out looking alright!

This mani was so easy! Which is not a thing I would usually say. It also looks awesome.

I used one coat of black creme polish (Sinful Colors – Black on Black) covered with two coats of a multichrome glitter (piCture pOlish – Aurora). I added top coat just to speed things up. I still and always will love Aurora, she’s so pretty!

The base colors were dry, I grabbed my newest black (which is to say my “wettest” black…my normal stamping black didn’t work at all. This super squishy clear stamper needs very wet polish to pick up properly!) which is why the stamp is not quite as dark as it could be. Regardless, I used my new B.03 plate from B. Loves Plates, which is full of eye-illusions and I know I will be using a LOT of, and picked a stamp.

I then used my crystal clear stamper (also from B Loves Plates) and went to town. Look at how parallel my lines are to my nail tip! And how ALL OF THE NAIL IS COVERED.

What I have learned: squishy stampers (like this new one) operate differently than hard stampers (my old one). You don’t have to push down to pick up an image, although you do still have to roll the stamper. You need to pick up the image faster, but have a slightly longer time to position and place the stamp before the polish dries and is unusable. Squishy stampers actually cover your entire nail all the way to the edge without issue. Magic!

Hope you enjoyed! And sorry-not-sorry for the photo spam, I do love multichromes!

As I mentioned yesterday, I really really should have waited for my base to dry!! I started with a dark purple creme and then added rainbow flakies. I keep forgetting that unlike my blue/green flakies (Maisie by Zoya) my rainbow flakies are in this really thick base that takes 2-3 coats to get a good glitter load! Thus the trouble began.

I added top coat after adding my flakies in hopes that it would speed up the drying process. Then I had the awful experience (I think for only the third time in my nail art career) of stamping and having polish squash OUT THE SIDE of my nails! The top layer was dry but the middle layers were NOT. It was awful.

I was so anguished that I just tried to salvage what I could. That is my only explanation for why my nails are patchy and the stamp didn’t fully transfer. I gave up. I had to wake up at 3am to catch a plane and I finished these at 8pm. It was a mess!

I promised you guys butterflies today, so here we go! I absolutely love this mani…mostly because I love everything butterfly-oriented, but also because MULTICHROME and FLAKIES! Best combo ever 😀

I can’t take full credit for this…I got the idea from Very Emily because she comes up with some awesome ideas! She also has swatched just about every mutlichrome ever and I wish I had her nail polish life!

This the 3rd? 4th? time I’ve done butterfly wing nails, but its the first time I’ve done them from the free edge rather than the cuticle bed. I don’t like it as much, but it was worth trying!

So, I have put together another top 10 list! These are polishes that I got my hands on this year (which is to say some of them are older) which I absolutely adore. I think all of them can still be found SOMEWHERE at least! Most of them are complicated polishes (glitters, crazy finishes, that kinda thing) because very few simple colors are awesome enough to make this list. There are two honorable mentions though, just because I used them so darn much!

Honorable 1: Essie – Penny Talk. This pink-gold metallic polish has been my go-to gold for a while, and I love it.

Honorable 2: Color Club – Harp on It. While this did not make my top 10, everyone who has ever come over to play with nail polish has wanted to use it, and that makes it special :-p

THE TOP 10 OF 2014 (according to flightofwhimsy): If you click on the name of the polish, it will link you back to the post where I reviewed the polish. All of these are easy to work with and I love them!

Eeep. I went overboard. This mani started beautifully…blue metallic polish with multi-colored flakies on top. Then I tried to stamp. And mattify. And…yah. It looks odd.

You can honestly tell how much I like any given manicure by how many photos of it I end up posting. I don’t like this one. I was hard-pressed to find even one photo that I thought was worthy of the blog, but so be it. In the future, I need to keep things simpler! I think its the flakies…I want to play with them but they always end up looking so busy!

I felt the driving urge to play with some multi chrome polishes. In the middle of swatching my zoyas. So, I did! This design came out a bit hard to see, but I like it anyway!

I started with a black base, followed by two coats of Aurora by piCture pOlish. Oh, I am so so glad I got this polish! *dies* …anyway…I added some stamps using Bundle Monster plate 206, and then painted thin lines up the side with Masquerade by ILNP. So many multi chromes, so little time!

Although the stamp is hard to see, when the light caught this mani it was spellbinding. And somehow using a blue/purple/awesome glitter multi chrome and then a purple/gold/green metallic multi chrome just made everything more interesting! COLORS EVERYWHERE.

I am a bit sad that this stamp isn’t full-nail…there are so many cool celtic knot patterns in the 2011 bundle monster set, and none of them will fill my nail!